Lessons

Lesson Info

Camera Operation

Well folks that's it that's the entire camera that's every button every dial every menu ceddie on the camera and so now that you're thoroughly confused let's talk about ok what are we actually going to do when we take photos and so this is the operation section then so this is kind of really distilling things down to the basic things like okay I'm gonna go out to pictures number one let me make sure I have a charged battery let me make sure that my memory card is ready to go I don't like keeping pictures from last christmas on my memory card when I'm going to the beach in the summer I like to get those pictures off the card and clean that card up ready to go out on the next photo shoot make sure that your images are set to the quality setting that you want set whether it's raw or j peg or both or whatever your needs are make sure that's correct and just confirm that you haven't done something crazy with your camera last night where you were doing art arty photos and now you're going to...

go take pictures of a serious portrait and you need to have your camera set to the best possible settings s o that just you know just keep aware of where things were the last time you used it so it's oftentimes good tio clean all that up after you finish the shoot so we headed in this mode, let's. Get back to set to the normal standard settings. And then, if you're going to be going on like a big trip or something, take a test shot or two, and check to see if the censor is dirty. And the way that I would do that is to shoot a very light, even colored object. Like a white wall. You'll see dust spots on that very, very easily. Or a white sheet of paper would be a good thing to shoot, to see if you have any problems with dust on the sensor. So in your camera there are hundreds of different features but the ones that you're going to be working with the most are the ones that you see on screen here these air controls for the exposure focus and a couple of other things in there as well so let's run our cameras through a few different options so the first one is just super simple going to the birthday party just need to take some basic pictures programme mode is going to be fine for basic picture taking this is where the camera is going to control shutter speeds and apertures and you don't need to worry about setting those you want to pay attention to him? Of course but you're not gonna have direct control like you do in the manual moz from here you want to make sure that you have your eyes so set normally I'm going to recommend two hundred but in a simple case like this auto isso will keep the I s o as low as it can in order to keep you within limits of reasonable handhold herbal shutter speeds you want to make sure that your exposure compensation is at zero unless you are specifically wanting it to do something else. The generic metering podium program that I am going to recommend is e s p and just in case anyone's wondering what is e s p extra sensory perception it's it knows what type of light I need. Well, it's electro selective pattern is what it stands words every company has to have their own little terminology that they create that's the olympus won so white balance in general I would just leave this at auto it's going to pick things up and make things correct in most all situations most of the times we're going to be focusing on subjects that are static that are not moving towards you and away from you so that isthe single auto focus it focuses once and then stops for the focusing area it uses all eighty one point so it just looks over the entire frame and basically picks out the biggest most significant thing to focus that's in the foreground and not the background and that's what's going to focus on which is usually going to work out just fine and then for the drive mode just leaving it in single so that when you press down on the shutter release you get one shot per picture and so this is really simple almost hand the camera to somebody else in order to take photos but I know all of you seeing how you watch this entire class are going to want to do things a little bit more manually so if you want to take a landscape photograph with this camera the way that I would do it would be something like like this first off I would be in manual second thing well, maybe even first thing, maybe zero thing is I would be on a tripod so that I could shoot at very, very slow shutter speeds and in this case I'm going to want to have my eyes so is lowest possible on the lowest setting is two hundred now technically you might be going but john one hundred is lower than two hundred yes, but it's a very special mode where the camera is kind of tweaking with the image in order to make it and I s o one hundred it's not a true s o one hundred it's uh it's going to actually have less dynamic range tonight so to hundreds of two hundred native best sensitivity in this camera next step for a landscape shot I probably want a lot of things in focus so this is where I'm going to set a lot of depth of field and on this camera are f eleven would be a great place to shoot a lot of landscape shots sometimes you need more like f sixteen or twenty two sometimes less will do least important to me in this type of shot is shutter speed because generally there's not a lot of moving things especially if I have my camera on a tripod so you'll end up with often slower shutter speeds when you have an aperture like f eleven or sixteen chosen exposure compensation is not part of the con computation here because we have chosen manual and in manual you don't do exposure compensation I am just fine with that e s p metering because it is a good general purpose metering system for white balance I'm pretty good with auto unless I'm in a very specific situation I do sometimes change this to sunny or cloudy depending on the situation for focusing my subjects are not moving around a lot so single auto focus and this is honestly where sometimes I go with manual focus as well and here I don't want to choose all eighty one points I want one single point I want this rock I want that tree and focus I want to choose exactly where my focus point is and this allows me to be very specific about that and then for the drive mode have a couple of options I could choose single if I have a cable release what if I don't have a cable release a great cheat is to use the two second self timer that allows you to fire the shutter release without bumping the camera allows the vibrations to settle out while you're shooting photos and so that's how I would shoot many of my landscape shots the only thing that would really change quite a bit would be the shutter speed according to the light levels that situation requires and maybe changing the white balance as well but that's the basic settings pretty simple, I think and that once again is going to be in the hand out on the last page of the handout all of this information is in there so you don't feel like you have to take too many notes because I've already taken notes for you all right next up portrait shooting here I have a subject I probably want the background a little out of focus my subject might be moving around so I'm thinking about shallow depth of field and a little bit faster shutter speed those are things that I wanna consider and make sure I get set properly all right I'm still liking to shoot in manual here and in this case I want my shallow depth of field if I have one of those one point four lenses I will use it at one point for I'm gonna want to make sure I have a fast enough shutter speed to stop the action of that particular subject usually a hundred twenty fifth of a second will do I will of course prefer to have the lowest eso possible but we'll bump it up if necessary I will continue to use their espn metering I will use auto white balance unless needed otherwise as long as my subjects are not walking up and down a catwalk then the s auto focus for single auto focus if they're stationary works just fine most definitely I'm going to want a small score single focusing point this allows me to be very precise about what I'm focusing on I want the face and focus I want the eyes and focus and finally for the drive mode single shot for basic picture taking although sometimes I could see potentially putting this in sequential low or even high depending on the situation so that's how I would shoot my portraits next up let's do some action photography so here the two critical things to think about our faster shutter speeds to stop the action and a focusing system that will track the movement of the subject once again I prefer manual exposure in these cases next up is I need a fast shutter speed it depends on the subject but probably at least five hundredth of a second this is where it really pays off to have one of those faster lenses that goes down to f two point eight for the esso I would prefer to be a two hundred but the reality is you're probably going to need I s o four hundred eight hundred or even more depending on the lighting conditions you're in dsp metering is a popular choice and I'm gonna stick with it as with auto white balance unless the situation dictates something other the probably the most important setting change is trained changing the focus to either continuous focus which would be my first choice but a second choice would be to try the continuous autofocus with tracking and how well the tracking works is going to depend on the subject you use and it's going to vary. It's a little less predictable about what it does it stands a potential chance of doing better but it could also do worse so it's a little it's a little bit sketchy and it's just going to depend on what you are doing with your camera for focusing area this is where I think the nine point focusing is really nice it gives you a little bit of area to kind of lock onto your subject and you can move that left right up down you could move it all around the frame there's quite a bit of leeway in what you could do there and so I definitely think that one's a very good system for that and then for the drive mode this is of course where you're going to probably want to have it either in continuous high or continuous low depending on how many frames per second you are needing from the situation and so that is my action set up all right let's do one final one this is what I call basic photography this is is often travel photography where you're walking down the street and you don't know what your next photo is going to be so this is how I will often have my camera when it's in the camera bag at home right now when I don't know what my next photo is going to be gotta be ready for a little bit of everything and so in this case I actually do use a little bit of automation so aperture priority is my preferred system and I'm going to set an aperture that's kind of wide open maybe four two point eight five point six something in that general rains that will give me a little bit faster shutter speed if I need more depth of field, I probably have time to change that I prefer to keep my eyes so is lowest possible kind of at the best setting and then I can consciously change that as I go into darker or lower light or faster action situations make my make sure my exposure compensation is at zero unless I need it otherwise you can guess remi during and white balance they're going to be for focusing generally I'm not focusing on action I will switch it if necessary if that comes about for the most part I want to be able to focus on something lock and recompose for focusing points I'm a big fan of just the single point it's kind of the slightly larger of the two single points so enough to grab on to a lot of different types of contrast which is how your camera focuses by looking at contrast, works real good in a lot of situation allows you a lot of directoral control over what you want and focusing and then for most photos I think it's just fine taking one photo at a time you could be very deliberate about your picture taking process, and so that's. How it would set up for basic photography and adjust as needed from there. So, with that, I can offer my congratulations. You are now in olympus, a windy iam five mark to expert and can it? You got the name right every single time. Today, a true professional. Thanks a lot for not mixing it up with any of the other e m cameras or mark cameras out there, because it can be very easy to get that mixed up. Well, thank you so much, john. Uh, do you have a few more things to talk about before we actually close out and wrap for the day? Well, just to let other people know that if this is the first class you've seen a mine, I teach other classes. And so this is one of my fast start siri's of classes. And the list of cameras you see on screen are classes that I either have or are in production and will be available soon at some point in the near future. And so I have classes on most all the popular cameras out there from all the major brands. Yeah, and I don't have time to do all of them, but I do try to pick the most important of my favorite ones, and this is definitely one. And so if you have friends or people that want to know more about different cameras, we got lots of classes, and all of these are exclusively at creative life.